Talk:Cooley (surname)

Wikipedia Ignorance

I'm revisiting this page after two years and I am still astonished that Wikipedia editors haven't the faintest conception of what a surname article should be about. Last time I posted, a Wikipedia employee simply didn't know that an article about a surname should NOT and is NOT a list of people with that surname. I'll quote from the 1942 Cooley Genealogy by Mortimer Cooley about a proper discussion of "surname":

"That the Cooley family name is one of great antiquity is unquestionable. The name, in one orthographic form or another is said to have existed in England long before the Danish and Norman Conquests, and perhaps, even before the Anglian, Saxon or Roman Conquests, since the most ancient seats of the family are said to have been in the Western Counties, least displaced by the Romans, Picts, Scots, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Normans and other invaders. One opinon holds that the Cooley family was one of those of the Angles migrating from North Germany to England during the 5th and 5th centuries, perhaps at about the time of the founding of the Anglian kingdom of Mercia and the old "Saxon Heptarchy" about 586. One of the earliest references to the name is spelled Cualnge, and appears in the 7th century when the great Celtic epic Tain Bo Cualnge, or The Cattle-Raid of Cooley (County Louth) was first committed to writing..."

Do you see what the study of a surname encompasses? Wikipedia editors are so confused and muddled about surname that their internal discussion degenerated into 'disambiguation' (look this up and its talk page) as though sifting though the various connotations of "surname" could possibly help them in a subject of which they are totally ignorant. Since 2011, NO rational discussion of surnames has appeared, even Smith (Whee! Lets list all the Smiths in the English-speaking world)--I take that back. Smith (surname) and Jones (surname) DO have rational discussions of surname. Why does the name Cooley seem to be stuck in the mud?

Please contact me for further help that you so desperately need. Uh, in fact, I'll write an article on the Cooley surname if you allow me to delete the current article which simply lists people with the surname Cooley. Dangnad (talk) 06:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)